Last night, while returning home from the grocery store, I came across a piece of paper lying on the sidewalk. It had obviously fallen out of the pocket of a child who was returning home after school, as it said:
My
Wish
List
By Jennifer
Jennifer had printed each letter with a different coloured magic marker, and had dotted her I’s with stars, a graphical flourish that I still employ. He title page was encircled by a bunch of swirly lines—also of different colours—and a series of unevenly spaced dots.
As beautiful and sweet a piece of folk art as you’re likely to find.
Inside, with far less visual flair, was a no-nonsense list of 13 items she wanted for Christmas, that she had printed—very carefully—in pencil. Some of the items, like Justin Bieber stuff, came with spray of exclamation points.
At the top of her list were a laptop and a cell phone, but these had both been crossed out, as her parents had likely told her that those gifts were out of the question. The other things she wanted were pretty standard fare for an 11 year-old girl, I think. She wanted money and clothes, jewelry and purse, a DVD of the movie New Moon, Wii Rock Star, anything related to Justin Bieber, and a variety of Hannah Montana stuff.
When I was a kid I LOVED making my Christmas list. I would flip through the massive Sears Christmas catalogue, which was as heavy as the telephone book, and start madly circling things, like I was on The Price is Right and I only had 90 seconds to go through the entire catalogue. Sometimes I did this so enthusiastically that the pen would tear through the page.
Rachelle’s nephews, aged 7 and 5, do the same thing for their parents. We were at their house last week and were flipping through the catalogue, looking at the things they wanted. Anything related to Pirates or Star Wars seemed to be gold, but there was also a whole host of unpredictable and eccentric items that had been selected.
As I flipped through the catalogue I saw that they had not confined themselves to toys, but had circled things like an angel candelabra, a crossbow, a crystal locket in the shape of a heart, and a weird looking humidifier, that for some reason had caught one of their eyes.
I guess you never know what’s going to make somebody happy, and for that we’re probably all very lucky.
At any rate, I hope that Jennifer, and William and Sammy (Rachelle’s nephews), get most of what they asked for, and a few surprising and wonderful things that they never even imagined, and I hope that you do, too.